2-913-765 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'"The Devonshire" - Russian Prisoners between Decks, 1854. Prisoners of the Crimean War held on prison hulks on the River Medway in Kent. 'There are now 1140 Russian prisoners on board the Devonshire and Benbow...The officers are stout-built, powerful men; but the soldiers have that thin lathy appearance which is seen in the inmates of our workhouses and prisons...truth compels us to state that there is an evident want of cleanliness among them. Making, however, every allowance, the Russian soldier, in his long grey pepper-and-salt great-coat, with faded facings, and no brass ornaments of any kind, is a very dingy-looking fellow...A great number of the prisoners are young men, and have little about them of that military air and carriage which the nations of the West inseparably associate with the profession of arms...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.